Category: Politics

E.J. Dionne writes in the Washington Post about departing Republican representative Sherwood Boehlert. His retirement saddens Dionne, because:

The affable 69-year-old New York Republican is one of the last of a breed: a liberal Republican, though he calls himself a “moderate” and has the record to prove it. Boehlert’s departure does not leave the House bereft of liberal Republicans — Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa is more liberal than Boehlert. But Leach, alas, is an outlier. The spotted owl is in good shape compared with liberal Republicans.

Republicans of this kind have little to offer the modern GOP, whose strength comes from perfect discipline and small majorities. While they are all for a big tent when the Presidential campaign is going, in terms of daily business strict adherence to the demands of Congressional leaders is paramount. In fact, Democrats have suffered because they failed to recognize this shift. Only recently have Democrat leaders imposed such strict discipline on their parties, such as in the vote to raise the debt ceiling, which all Senate Democrats voted against.

Dionne acknowledges that some argue this strict discipline is a good thing:

Why does the decline and fall of liberal Republicanism matter? After all, rationalizing the political system into a more conservative GOP and a more-or-less liberal Democratic Party makes the alternatives clearer to voters, who are offered, in Goldwater’s famous phrase, “a choice, not an echo.”

The post-2004 triumphalism springs from this idea. The elated Republicans essentially claimed that Bush won, so the GOP agenda was fully embraced, so Democrats ought to shut it. He had political capital to spend. Yet this simplistic view ignores the fact that almost half of the nation repudiated the GOP agenda. In Europe, where party discipline has always been very strict, there are many parties to choose from, and proportional representation as well, so the composition of national leadership ends up approximating the nation’s wishes.

In America, however, the GOP is able to transform slim victories into total control through the magic of party discipline. The only casualty, Dionne points out, is good government:

But it turns out that a Republican Party dominated by conservatives is no more coherent than the party that left room for progressives. The huge budget deficit is conservatism’s Waterloo, testimony to its political failure. The conservatives love to cut taxes but can’t square their lust for tax reduction with plausible spending cuts. Oh, yes, a group of House conservatives has a paper plan involving deep program cuts, but other conservatives know that these cuts will not pass, and shouldn’t.

Back when debate and disagreement were more common, solutions to the deficit would have seemed easier to reach. Now they are impossible to contemplate without a major adjustment of Congress. Thank ideological discipline for that.

President Bush is not able to recognize and respond to the worsening situation in Iraq. Reporting in a Washington Post story, headlined Old Forecasts Come Back to Haunt Bush, analyzes the mysterious phenomenon of the President and his associates making claims about the Iraq War, those claims being proven wrong, and the officials who made them refusing to acknowledge and adjust to these realities.

Before I get into the nitty gritty, let me say that I never believed the Iraq War was a good idea. I did not think it was pragmatic to invade a country when the struggle seemed likely to be costly and dangerous, and when we had weapons inspections operating in the region. Nevertheless, once the War began, I hoped that it would have a positive outcome. Three years (and counting) after the fact, whatever one’s position on the decision to invade, it is clear that some decisions were wrong. Good leaders learn from successes and failures alike. The President, the Vice President, and many officials have shown that they are not prepared to learn from their mistakes. This is a problem. I expect the leaders of our nation to hold themselves to a higher standard of accountability.

From the article:

Other statements were proved wrong. The weapons of mass destruction the administration said Saddam Hussein possessed before the war have never been found — and many experts believe never existed. White House officials hammered then-chief economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey for claiming the war could cost as little as $100 billion, saying the estimate was too high. The actual tally is fast approaching four times that amount, according to the Congressional Research Service, which estimates a $360 billion price tag to date.

The President underestimated the cost of the War. This in itself is one thing, War being a complex and hard to budget thing. He has, however, never acknowledged the mistake, and the administration continues to budget for the War in special add-on funding packages that hide the cost by keeping it out of the main budget. This is nonsense. The President should be frank with us about the War’s costs.

I won’t go into the WMD thing, except to say that I cannot believe that the President was so serene about abandoning his original rationale for War as soon as it turned out to be false. The correct thing to do would have been to acknowledge the error, and then make the case to stay based on the facts. Instead he began parroting new talking points.

Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M.) said in an interview that Cheney was wrong about the insurgency being in its last throes and that she sent word to the White House recently to level with the American people about the challenges. “We need to assume that things are going to be very hard because when you do, you plan accordingly,” said Wilson. “I am always cautious about always seeing things in the best light because war is not like that” and the public knows it.

Exactly. I probably do not agree with Ms. Wilson on many issues, she being, after all, a Republican. On this point, though, we are like peas in a pod: Plan for the worst, and hope for the best. In a matter as grave as War, with such far-reaching consequences for the nation, our leaders should be planning based on all the facts they can find. Instead, they appear locked into a pattern of asserting their own infallibility.

The Nation’s grim take on the situation sums up some of the consequences of this approach:

Over the past three years, the Administration has offered us a succession of reasons we must “stay the course” to match the succession of rationales for the war itself. An American withdrawal, we were told, would embolden the insurgency, make Iraq a safe haven for terrorists and foreign jihadis and lead to civil war. One by one each of these predictions has come true. Not, of course, because we withdrew or even announced a timetable for withdrawal or redeployment but because we could not control the forces the war and the occupation unleashed or created.

The editorial is concise and blistering, and as is usual for The Nation, it is strongly worded. The piece does do a better job of engaging with the facts as they exist than the President does, and that fact should make us all reconsider blindly staying the course for another year (or more).

A Washington Post story details the challenges that face the Republican party as it struggles to define a clear national message for the 2006 elections. The article presents a few issues that the party is split on, including immigration, out of control spending, and things like that. Of greater interest to me, though, is the viewpoint put forth in this quote:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said the root of the problem is a failure of Washington Republicans to stick to principles, saying that his party risks losing power because it has done “a pretty poor job” of executing its small-government philosophy. “Republicans just need to take stock, go back and realize that the American people elected them because of their principles, and when you do not adhere to those principles, the American people are just as likely to turn you out and choose someone else.”

I would contend that Perry’s assertion that “Americans elected” Republicans “because of their principles” is not altogether true. Thinking back to the 2004 elections, Republicans touted primarily their foreign policy and defense principles, not their domestic or fiscal management principles. It had become pretty clear by that point that deficits weren’t going to be seriously addressed by this administration. So I think the problem, for Republicans, sprung to an extent from the continuing difficulty in Iraq coupled with a sense that they have dropped the ball on securing our borders and ports. These were the issues that they ran on, and the people are not pleased. To claim that the voters embraced the entire GOP agenda is simply not accurate, as the Social Security fiasco demonstrated.

In light of that, I was amused by this herculean spin effort on the part of Ken Mehlman:

“If you are someone who favors small government,” Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman said, “you’re going to have a clear choice between someone who has cut taxes every year in office, who believes you ought to own your own health care . . . and who plans to cut the deficit over five years versus people who have consistently supported more spending, have opposed tax cuts and who oppose patients owning their own health care. The question is, who’s on your side for reducing the size of government?”

Only one of those choices involves a coherent strategy, and it is the Democratic one. It doesn’t make sense to cut taxes and claim that will cut the deficit. Democrats, meanwhile, oppose reducing government revenue and support using the revenue to help the citizens. Americans don’t want a reduced government, and that is not what they voted Republicans into office to do. They voted them into office so that the Republicans would save them from the terrorists. Apparently, America thinks they aren’t getting it done.

You may recall that former House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, was forced to step down as part of a money laundering scandal. He is also noted for his close relationships with lobbyists, particularly Jack Abramoff, who is also facing trial over his various corrupt dealings. So, when the Republicans were looking to replace to DeLay with someone more respectable, they chose John Boehner, who made some nice speeches about changing direction and so forth. Well, check this (from the Washington Post):

The Center for Public Integrity said that Boehner accepted 42 privately sponsored trips from January 2000 to December 2005. That put him on the road to other countries and “golfing hotspots,” often with his wife, Debbie, for about half a year, “only nine days of which he listed as being ‘at personal expense,’ ” the center said.

I see. It appears that this is a clear case of “meet the new leader, same as the old leader.” Don’t the Republicans get it? Americans don’t want corruption. They don’t like sleazy, “fact-finding” missions (“Nice drive!” “Ain’t that a fact.”) This will be of great help to the Democrats in November, as it makes clear the culture of corruption of the GOP.

In fairness, one might ask what Boehner was doing on these trips. Well:

Among the places Boehner traveled on privately financed trips were Edinburgh, Scotland; Venice; Brussels; and Barcelona, the center said. Two of his domestic destinations, which the center pointed out are famous for their golf courses, were Boca Raton, Fla., and Scottsdale, Ariz.

The report said Boehner received more than $160,000 in food, lodging, transportation and other expenditures on his privately paid journeys. His benefactors included the Chicago Board of Trade, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CSX Corp. and the Sallie Mae Foundation.

Boehner, of course, being a Representative of Ohio, surely has pressing matters to investigate in these places, on behalf of his constituents–not! No wonder that Boehner, as reported in the article, resisted Dennis Hastert’s motion to ban lobbyist paid travel for representatives. What would he do without it? Most disturbing of all, his people don’t seem to grasp why this is all wrong:

Rather, Madden [a Boehner spokesman] pointed to the center’s report as proof that disclosure works well. Madden said the study was possible because of the thorough disclosures Boehner made through the years and which he now advocates expanding. The center was able to detail Boehner’s activities because his trips, “in each and every instance, were promptly and publicly disclosed according to law,” Madden said.

Right. No worries about conflicts of interest or corruption. As long as its clearly reported, it’s fine. The only good thing about that approach is it will make it even clearer to voters where the GOP stands on this ethical issue.

Perhaps you remember when Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) said this about judicial decisions he did not agree with:

It causes a lot of people, including me, great distress to see judges . . . make raw political or ideological decisions . . .I don’t know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. . . . And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception . . . where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in violence.

Around the same time, Tom DeLay, then House Majority Leader, also aired some of his grievances about the federal court’s failure to intervene in the matter of Terri Schiavo:

The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.

Well, now we learn from Ruth Bader Ginsburg that these irresponsible statements have had real consequences:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg assailed the court’s congressional critics in a recent speech overseas, saying their efforts “fuel” an “irrational fringe” that threatened her life and that of a colleague, former justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

The fundamental problem for the GOP is that the Supreme Court’s job is to uphold the Constitution, but the Republicans currently in power want to do whatever they like. They believe wholeheartedly in the tyranny of the majority. So it pisses them off in a big way when they don’t get to ride roughshod over whatever law or decision they don’t agree with.

They’re not even sorry:

[Rep. Tom] Feeney [(R-Fla.)] noted that some of Ginsburg’s own colleagues on the court disagree with her. He said “there are some justices that get awful thin skins when they get their black robes on, and when they talk about judicial independence, they sometimes mean no one should be able to criticize them.”

This guy is a big time moron. Criticism is not the same as implicit justification of violence, and everyday citizens are not the same as elected officials. I wonder what would happen if John Kerry gave a speech that justified assassinating Bill Frist. Would it be thin skinned of Frist to be upset? No, of course not. Ginsburg is totally within her rights to be angry that irresponsible Republicans have put her life at risk with their inappropriate statements.

We’ve all heard the smear about tax and spend Democrats. These mythical creatures infuriated Republicans around the country by taking their hard earned money and throwing it away on useless spending programs. Well, now we discover the Republican alternative, brought to you by the Republican majority in Congress:

Congress raised the limit on the federal government’s borrowing by $781 billion yesterday

. . .

On vote after vote in the House and Senate, lawmakers demonstrated the growing gap between their political promises to rein in spending and their need to respond to emergencies and protect politically popular programs. The votes followed last weekend’s GOP leadership meeting in Memphis, at which virtually every speaker called on the party to renew its commitment to fiscal discipline and to control federal spending and the deficit

And that’s really the GOP’s problem: those big government, tax and spend programs are very popular, and there isn’t any way they can get rid of them without being punished at the ballot box. At the same time, they have promised to lower taxes. So they bring us a government with lower revenues as a proportion of GDP, and with the same big spending that the populace wants. The only way they can finance it is through debt. How bad is it?

It was the fourth debt-ceiling increase in the past five years, following boosts of $450 billion in 2002, a record $984 billion in 2003 and $800 billion in 2004. The statutory debt limit has now risen by more than $3 trillion since Bush took office.

It is bad. Very bad. They have shown themselves to be unprincipled cowards, unable to stand up either for fiscal conservatism, by cutting popular spending programs, or for their constituents, by raising taxes to pay for the programs they want. Despicable. Their rhetoric is fundamentally deceptive, and the American people should realize that we’ve let snake-oil peddlers into the highest chambers of government.

UPDATE: As shown at Daily Kos, the Democrats did a fine job:

52-48. Every single Democrat voted against imposing this financial burden on working Americans.

This is the way to do it. Stand unified with regular Americans, and election gains will come.

That’s the headline I would have liked to have seen on this Washington Post story, which describes the new national security strategy the President is putting forward today

reaffirming his doctrine of preemptive war against terrorists and hostile states with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, despite the troubled experience in Iraq.

Troubled? Troubled?!?! What about the fact that Iraq did not possess the weapons? Is it still pre-emption if you were wrong about the threat? No. It is war at will, for no good reason. The piece highlights the stark contrast between Bush’s perception and reality:

many critics believe the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq fatally undermined an essential assumption of the strategy — that intelligence about an enemy’s capabilities and intentions can be sufficient to justify preventive war.

In his revised version, Bush offers no second thoughts about the preemption policy, saying it “remains the same” and defending it as necessary for a country in the “early years of a long struggle” akin to the Cold War.

. . .

“If necessary, however, under long-standing principles of self defense, we do not rule out use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack,” the document continues. “When the consequences of an attack with WMD are potentially so devastating, we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave dangers materialize.”

This is pure insanity. How can the American people sit still for this? Bush’s claim is that the consequences of a WMD attack are so grave that it justifies war against anyone he thinks might have those weapons, or who might be trying to get them. He should have learned from Iraq that reality is not always as he fantasizes it will be.

The most unbelievable part of all is this:

“We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran,” the document says,
. . .

The language about confrontation is not repeated with North Korea, which says it already has nuclear bombs, an assertion believed by U.S. intelligence.

So North Korea has nuclear weapons and we are focusing on Iran? This is silliness of the highest order, which would be hilarious satire except that it is actually happening. A policy of going around starting wars with countries we don’t like because we’re paranoid won’t lead anywhere good. It will not generate the prosperity and goodwill in troubled nations that we need to build support for the US around the world. The best way to protect ourselves from attack is not to crush all possible enemies, which creates many more, but to convince people not to want to attack us in the first place.

We have come to a point where all the contradictions and deceptions of the Iraq War are beginning to fall asunder, and the full measure of President Bush’s mendacity and incompetence are starting to stick out. He has put our troops in an untenable situation, which he maintains is necessary by making up more and more fanciful scenarios.

A report in Thursday’s Washington Post shows us why the situation is untenable:

At least four and perhaps as many as 13 people were killed, including a number of women and at least one child, in a U.S. military operation Wednesday against a house where insurgent collaborators were believed to have taken refuge, local officials and the U.S. military said.

. . .

“The killed family was not part of the resistance; they were women and children,” Ahmed Khalaf told the AP. “The Americans have promised us a better life, but we get only death.”

I am sure these American soldiers were doing their best, and I have sympathy for them, because the killing of a child must take a toll I cannot understand on the killer. Nevertheless, events like this were bound to happen in the guerilla war with the insurgents. Conducting searches like this and policing civilians are not things our military was designed or trained to do, and it is cruel to put the burden on them. The person at fault is the one who ordered them into the country in the first place: Bush.

Bush has put our soldiers in harm’s way, ordered them into situations where they risk their own lives and the lives of innocents around them, all for something that turned out not to be true. They are at risk for George W. Bush’s fantasies.

Bush does not admit to any responsibility, or offer any concrete plan. Robert Scheer describes it this way, writing in The Nation:

Of course, Bush would have us believe this expanding civil war is the work of insidious foreigners rather than of competing agendas arising from within an Iraq society long stunted by colonialism and dictatorship. It does not occur to him that he is the foreigner who the majority of Iraqis hold responsible for the country’s despair

. . .

Such bright contradictions were on display in Bush’s latest strategically bankrupt “plan” for victory: Spending $3.3 billion to fight the IEDs Bush now claims Iran is smuggling into Iraq–to the very Shiite forces that won the US-engineered election and are positioned to form the first real post-Hussein government.

Bush chooses to scapegoat Iran and IEDs. IEDs are a weapon just like any other. You cannot justify a war because the enemy uses weapons. While it would be of great benefit to our soldiers if the threat from IEDs could be lessened, I don’t think of choosing to do that as particularly praiseworthy–the President should always be doing his best to protect the troops. As for Iran, let me refer you to another Washington Post report:

Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, said today he has no evidence the Iranian government has been sending military equipment and personnel into neighboring Iraq.

On Monday, President Bush suggested Iran was involved in making roadside bombs, known as improvised explosive devices, that are being used in Iraq. And Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld last week accused Iran of sending members of its Revolutionary Guard to conduct operations in Iraq.

Get your stories straight while the cameras are off, guys. There is no evidence that Iran is helping the insurgents. Why should they? The Shiites who won the elections are Iran-friendly, and once we leave they will no doubt get very well acquainted.

In that report is a money quote you will not believe:

Asked how long Americans might be fighting in Iraq, Rumsfeld said: “We know that insurgencies can last five, eight, 10, 12, 15 years and we’ve said that. We also know that insurgencies ultimately are defeated, not by foreign occupying forces but by the indigenous forces of that particular country . . .”

Did you get that? Foreign occupying forces don’t defeat insurgencies! So what the f**k have we been doing there these last few years! Here’s hoping that the time when sending people off to die for a fantasy comes to a sudden halt in November of 2006.

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) has proposed that the Senate should censure President Bush “for approving an ‘illegal program to spy on American citizens on American soil,'” reports the Washington Post. This seems to be a no brainer to me, in that Bush clearly did violate the FISA law. All the Republican arguments defending the President attempt to retroactively justify his actions, but they never argue that they were legal given the current laws.

In any event, the Washington Post story has a few curious sections that I thought I’d point out:

GOP leaders who had been reeling from the impact of Republican political scandals, an unpopular war and Bush’s mishandling of the port-security issue sensed that Feingold overplayed his hand and denounced the censure resolution as a political stunt by an ambitious lawmaker positioning himself to run for president in 2008. Many Democrats, while sympathetic to Feingold’s maneuver, appeared to be distancing themselves from his resolution yesterday, wary of polls showing that a majority of Americans side with the president on wiretapping tactics.

This paragraph features some of those unacknowledged questions I blogged about a few days ago. The reporter here repeats the tactical decisions of both sides without engaging in any way the actual truth or plausibility of Feingold’s proposal. It is useless to report that Republicans think he “overplayed his hand,” but to ignore the question at the heart of the matter, i.e. did President Bush break the law?

Feingold, 53, says he is convinced that Bush broke the law in ordering National Security Agency wiretaps of overseas telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens that involved people suspected of terrorist activities without first obtaining special court approval, and that his party must take a firm stand in protest.

Once again, it is nice to know what Feingold thinks happened, but what about the facts of the case? This paraphrase is full of factual claims that could be proven or disproven, if the reporter cared to take the time. Instead, we spend time with reporting like this:

Republicans seized on Feingold’s presidential ambitions as the motivation behind his bid. Feingold “should be ashamed of this political ploy,” said Frist, who also has presidential ambitions.

Democratic views were mixed . Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) dismissed the proposed censure as “getting way down the road on this issue.” When asked on NBC’s “Today” show yesterday morning whether Feingold was “grandstanding for 2008,” Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), himself a 2008 prospect and a leading Democratic voice on foreign policy, replied: “No, I think it’s more of an intense frustration. Do any of you in the news media or any of us have any idea what the president is doing?”

These carefully balanced sentences create the impression that there is no right or wrong answer. While I suppose there might be debate in some circles over the legality of Bush’s wiretapping program, at least let’s hear about that debate, instead of wasting time and space rehashing what politicians say about Feingold’s motion. If Bush broke the law, then the censure motion is worthy, no matter the motivation or political climate. If he did not, then the censure motion should not pass. In either case, I would think that Feingold deserved praise for bringing the question to everyone’s attention.

This opening paragraph of a Washington Post story says so much about the state of affairs the Bush administration has created:

Prominent activists inside Iran say President Bush’s plan to spend tens of millions of dollars to promote democracy here is the kind of help they don’t need, warning that mere announcement of the U.S. program endangers human rights advocates by tainting them as American agents.

We all know that the United States is toxic in Iran, so this announcement is not surprising. The challenge in Iran is to find ways to help the people reclaim power from the theocrats without getting them killed in the process. The article centers on the story of three Iranians who went to a conference in Dubai about human rights, and then, months later, were jailed after President Bush announced the plans. However, these events serve as a point of entry into the challenges of working in Iran:

“Unfortunately, I’ve got to say it has a negative effect, not a positive one,” said Abdolfattah Soltani, a human rights lawyer recently released from seven months in prison. After writing in a newspaper that his clients were beaten while in jail, Soltani was charged with offenses that included spying for the United States.

If US involvement can be dangerous for human rights groups within the country, creative solutions are needed. The President, unfortunately, has decided to adopt a strategy that involves threatening the current regime. He threatens them if they don’t stop pursuing nuclear research. He threatens them by trying to inspire revolt among their people.

“Our society is very complicated,” said Vahid Pourostad, editor of National Trust, a new newspaper aligned with Iran’s struggling reform movement. “Generally speaking, it is impossible to impose something from outside. Whatever happens will happen from inside.

“It seems to me the United States is not studying the history of Iran very carefully,” Pourostad said. “Whenever they came and supported an idea publicly, the public has done the opposite.”

Iran, of course, is ruled by some pretty terrible people. Reform is desperately needed in that country, and the United States would like to help that reform take place. But creative solutions are needed. Solutions like cutting down our fuel consumption so that Iran will have to generate a more people-centered economy, which will bring civil rights with it, for example. Simply calling them evil and then threatening to invade if they don’t do what we say is not foreign policy worthy of our stature.